Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility (26 page)

YOU'D THINK THAT BY MY POPULARITY ALONE, Keiger
would offer my unemployed ass a job bartending at
The Local. But I guess there are two huge flaws in
my argument: One, they don't need another bartender; and two, the reason I'm so popular is because
the single time I did bartend there, I gave away all the
alcohol. Still, who the hell does he think he is? He hired goddamn
Grant to be a bartender when the only bar experience Grant had was
sitting on the other side of it demanding they forego the glasses and
just pour the hooch directly into that Grand Canyon he calls a mouth.
And yet I-who was practically raised in a bar-couldn't even score a
side shift as, say, a busboy or something.

"No way in hell," Keiger laughs, adding that he is so seriously
not even ever gonna hire me as a bartender that I should immediately
start looking elsewhere for a fallback career. "You should write your
book," he says.

Keiger has been using that as an excuse not to hire me for years,
and I cannot tell you how mad that makes me. I remember when
Keiger first offered Grant a job years ago. We-me, Grant, Lary, and
Daniel-had been hanging out there since the place opened. Keiger
honed in on our foursome, plucked Grant up like a truffle in a pig
trough, put him behind the bar, and taught him everything he knew.
Then he simply let Grant radiate his Grant vibes, and before you knew
it that place was packed like a frat-house phone booth. Lary loved it, because Lary could go there every night that Grant worked and just sit
there like the goddamn barnacle that he is, with his tongue rolled out
over the top of the bar. Personally, though, this development made me
stew. It didn't help that after I had Milly, Grant told me Keiger didn't
like me bringing her there.

"I can't believe I'm being discriminated against," I had bitched to
Grant. I had brought one of those baby seats that hook onto the edge
of things and serve as a suspended appendage of sorts, a kind of auxiliary pod for Milly to sit in while she played with her big, multicolored
plastic caterpillar on the bar top. I was really good about only having
Milly's diaper bag spread out over the surface that was right in front of
me, plus maybe, I swear just a molecule, a little bit overlapping onto
the garnish tray. But it was early and we were the only customers in
there, anyway. And I wasn't even ordering anything, so what's the big
goddamn deal?

"Get out, bitch," Grant said to me, his face close. It was then
that I realized it was Grant, not Keiger, who didn't want Milly and me
there. And I remembered that this was the second time a bartender
had tried to throw me out of a bar.

The first was when I was seven. Kitty, my father's favorite bartender at the Thin Lizzy, got all upset one night. I guess she had issues
of her own and it didn't help that she was really popular so her customers always bought her shots-my dad foremost among them.

Anyway, that night Kitty had stayed after her shift to party with
her patrons; even my mother came to join in. There we were, my sisters and I, being jostled about between well-meaning drunk people, when Kitty took me aside and told me to get out. "Get out," she
implored. "This is no place for you." I think she got it into her head
that I wouldn't ever make my way past where we were right then, and
she was adamant that this place was no good for me. I was only seven
and liked that place fine, but her words have resonated with me ever
since.

Keiger makes sure to remind me of the days when we first met,
years ago when I used to sit on his balcony writing story after story
in my notebooks. "You're a writer," he says. "You should write for a
living."

He's the most begrudging with compliments, so it made me think
maybe I could pull it off. I sent some pieces to editors and amazingly
landed a column in a small paper based on nothing but my reliable
moray-eel of a personality. Still, though, I need real income.

"It's because you care so much about me, isn't it?" I tell Keiger.
"That's why you won't hire me."

"Seriously," he replies. "You are the worst bartender." And then
he hugs me. It's a real hug; he pulls me into the nape of his neck as if
I fit there like a fuzzy muffler.

"But they love me," I whimper.

"I'd love you, too, if you gave me my booze for free," Keiger
says.

But if you ask me, there are two huge flaws in his argument:
One, he doesn't drink; and two, he already loves me. Maybe it's not
the treat-her-like-a-queen kinda love, but still. Love is love. I know it
when I see it.

LARY SAYS HE'S GONNA WAIT UNTIL HE'S SIXTY before he sucks his first
cock, which I think is ridiculous. "Why wait?" I ask. "What if it turns
out you like it?"

"Exactly," he counters. "I figure if I like it I'll have little time left
to do it."

I personally would never trust anything tender between this man's
teeth, but that doesn't mean he should wait until he's sixty to be gay if
that's what he is. Lary's gayness has always been a big question mark
between Grant and me. Grant is certain Lary's gay and he just hasn't
had the right amount of tequila to admit it. Me, I've known Lary longer than Grant and I'm convinced otherwise. At best, Lary's sexuality
remains a question mark. "Gay is relative," he says, and certain question marks are simply worth keeping.

But hell, who knows what any of us will be at any time in our
lives? I remember back in college when I'd somehow convinced myself
I was a straight-A student, and damn if my GPA didn't reflect this
belief right up until I graduated. I'm talking about the degree I got
after I flunked out during my first foray into college, after deciding to
start over at another university.

I got the idea after going to Hawaii with what was left of my family after my dad died. My mother got it into her head that we'd better
start doing stuff together as a family while we were all within reasonable distance of each other. My brother at the time lived in a beach
town up the coast, where he shared an apartment with a mob of horny grad students. He himself worked as a waiter at a steak restaurant, but
he was in his eighth year at Long Beach State and would graduate
eventually. I don't judge. Counting the two years I squandered before
I started over, it took me six years to get my degree.

But back to Hawaii; we got the condo in Makaha through my
sister Cheryl's connections. She was waiting tables as well at the time,
at that restaurant staffed by leggy dames wearing skirts shorter than
the aprons around their waists and stiletto heels so high you could
hold them to hunt bison. It was the closest thing to a Playboy Club we
had in San Diego, and most of the patrons were rich guys with flared
collars and pinky rings. One of them owned the condo and gave the
key to Cheryl so we could use it for a week. It was located next to a
massive Sheraton resort property, and that first night I got blotto on
mai tais, stole a golf cart, and crashed it into an irrigation ditch. Fun
times.

The next morning I lay around at the condo, the one owned by
the rich guy, too hung over from my copious underage drinking to
go with the rest of my family to the Hawaiian culture center, where I
hear a bunch of big-bellied men with tattooed faces roasted a pig and
served it with poi. The condo was furnished like a corporate hotel
suite, with no evidence of a personal residence at all except a collection of books on a shelf in the bedroom, one of which was The Lazy
Man's Way to Riches by Richard Gilly Nixon.

Hell, I thought, I like riches, and I damn well know I'm lazy, as I'd
been told I was lazy all my life. I remember as a child eavesdropping
on my parents as they joked about the future employment prospects of each of their offspring, and when they got to me, my mother pondered, "What will Hollis become?" and my father, without missing a
beat, laughed, "Fired!" So I pocketed Nixon's book and carried it to
the beach.

I read half the book, up until the part where it started to get
specific about the path to riches, which involved mail-order of some
kind. I did read the part that heralded goal setting and warned of
the energy-draining effects of masturbation on the brains of young
achievers. "Read your goals every night before you go to bed, and
every morning when you wake up."

So I made a list and kept it under my pillow, unfolding it every
night and every morning. I wish I still had the list, because it would
be fun to see if, all these years later, any of the goals listed so long
ago match my actual accomplishments. Here are a few I remember: I
want to be a straight-A student. Check. I want to own my own home.
Check. I want to be a published writer. Check. I want to be rich.
Question mark.

The list was very long, believe me, and I read it every morning and every night for exactly five months until I fell in love with a
bartender and commenced having all the energy-sapping orgasms the
book had warned about. But I still marvel at how just five months of
resolute goal setting did seem to set a direction for me that led me to
the life I now have, one with more checks and less question marks. I
used to wonder what I would have accomplished had I just kept it up
and forsaken all the side trails, but not any longer. Riches are relative,
I say, and certain question marks are simply worth keeping.

J W L c L_ JV a_A c. d. cl4/o m ~.j

LARY IS POUTING, WHICH I DIDN'T THINK was possible. I had no idea
he had that in his limited repertoire of expressions. I've known him a
long time, and as far as I could tell, he had two gears: evil and quietly
evil. Take the time he helped me move after I left fifty phone messages threatening to contact his stalker-the one with the fake tits big
enough to be seen from other solar systems-to tell her he didn't die
horribly in a mining accident after all. "Pick up the phone, ass-tard,"
I hollered into his voicemail, "or little Miss Psycho will be sleeping in
your driveway again."

Lary did not pick up the phone, but he showed up at my house
later that day chipper as a Christian at summer camp. It wasn't until a
month later, when I finally got around to unpacking, that I saw he'd
demolished anything breakable in every box he'd carried. "You didn't
need that shit anyway," was his excuse, and the only reason he's still
my friend is because he's probably right.

And now he is pouting because, he said, I keep misrepresenting his new business venture, the mail-order mosquito-larvae empire.
"They're not mosquito larvae," he keeps insisting. "Don't call them
mosquito larvae."

"But that's exactly what they are. You scooped them out of a
puddle in your carport, for chrissakes," I said. "What the hell else
should I call them?"

"Swamp Buddies."

"Swamp Buddies?" I choked.

"Swamp Buddies, bitch," he said. "It's all in the advertising. Use
your imagination."

Jesus God, it's sewer sludge. I don't care how you package it, who
the hell is gonna fork over dough for diseased vector eggs? Of course,
I remember when I was a kid I sent off for a packet of magic Sea Monkeys. The packet was probably no more than a few pellets of compressed anthrax, but still, after I added the water, I fully expected the
sludge to evolve into the enchanted population of regal little creatures
depicted in the comic-book ad, including the smiling Sea Monkey
King complete with crown and triton. I planned to name him Ferdinand, stage assassinations, and enact tiny little world wars.